I know that when you first start reading, it’s hard to hold a narrative thread through a longer post, but give this one a try – 6 short paragraphs, all of them very straightforward. This one has mostly very beginner language, with a couple of intermediate or upper-intermediate words. The grammar, rather than the vocab, is probably the hard part of this post, which is an great survey of every basic Chinese sentence structure. If you can read this, your foundation in Chinese grammar is very solid.

A few notable points:

他过的很快乐，时光飞快地过去了。

I figure that might be confusing for new readers, since there are two different uses of the word 过 guò here. I tend to find that the easiest way to remember what 过 means in every context is that it almost always means either “past” or “pass”, or one of many variations thereon. Let’s look a few usages of 过.

1) In the most common usage, the one we see earliest in our learning, 过, when used after an action, means that the action has “been done before”, or “has been done in the past”, as in “Have you ever been to Shanghai (in the past)?” （你去过上海吗?), or “Have you ever eaten this type of fish (in the past)?” (你吃过这种鱼吗?).

3) Usage three, also 过去, means “The Past”, a noun, as in the opposite of the future. “To forget the past is a betrayal.” (忘记过去，就意味着背叛)

4) The fourth usage is “to pass (time)”, or “to pass one’s days” (过日子), or to “How were you [how did you pass] the last few days?” (这些天过得怎么样？).

5) Another 过去 – to “pass across”, “to cross” (as in a river or street).

6) 过去 “to pass by” (someone or something).

And on and on. In our sentence here, we’re using #4 first, and then #2.

他过的很快乐，时光飞快地过去了。

“He passed [his days] very happily, time flew past.”

Make sense? Hope so, because several different usages of 过去 come up in this post, so keep an eye out.

One more thing:

咱们 zán men. This means “us” or “we”. I know, I know, you learned that 我们 means “us” and “we”, and it does. 咱们 only refers to “us” and “we” when the speaker is including the person they’re talking to. So 咱们 means really “You and I”, not “we”. Confusing, right? Here are some examples：

我们： “Sorry, you can’t come with us, we’re going to see a movie alone.” (The person being spoken to is not included in the “we”.)
咱们： “Why don’t we see a movie this afternoon?” （The speaker is including the person spoken to in the “we”.)

我们： “I’ll call you as soon as we get back.” (The person being spoken to is not included in the “we”.)
咱们： “What should we do when we get back?” （The speaker is including the person spoken to in the “we”.)

我们： “We’re not home right now, leave a message!” (The person being spoken to is not included in the “we”.)
咱们： “We could go home right now and check the messages.” （The speaker is including the person spoken to in the “we”.)

Little Horse and his mother lived by the river. He passed his days happily, and time flew by. One day, Mother called little horse to her side and said: “Little Horse, you’re all grown up, you can help mother with a few things. Today, take that sack of grain and take it to the village on the opposite riverbank.”

Little Horse happily agreed. Carrying the grain on his back he flew to the river. But there was no bridge over the river, he could only wade across. But he didn’t know how deep the river was.(?) While he was hesitating he lifted his head, and saw Uncle Ox eating grass not far away. Little horse hurriedly ran over and asked: “Uncle Ox, do you know if the river is deep or not?”

Uncle Ox straightened his big, tall body and laughing, said: “Not deep, not deep. It only comes up to my calf.”

Little Horse happily ran back to the riverside and prepared to wade across. He’d just taken one step, when suddenly he heard a voice say: “Little Horse, Little Horse, don’t go in, this river is so deep!” Little Horse lowered his head and looked down, and saw it was Little Squirrel. Little Squirrel raised her pretty tail, round eyes opened wide, and spoke earnestly: “Two days ago my companion accidentally fell into the river, and the water swept him away.”

Little Horse had no idea. Uncle Ox said the water was shallow, Little Squirrel said the water was deep, what was he to do? He had to go back and ask Mother. From a distance, Mother Horse saw Little Horse returning with a lowered head and carrying the sack of grain. She knew in her heart that he must have run into trouble, so she went to welcome Little Horse and ask. Little horse, crying, told Mother what Uncle Ox and Little Squirrel had said. Mother consoled Little Horse, saying: “Don’t worry, let’s go together and have a look.”

Little Horse and Mother went back to the riverbank again, and Mother let little horse test out how deep the water was. Little Horse carefully tried it out, and step by step waded across the river. Hey, he understood, the river on the one hand wasn’t as shallow as Uncle Ox said, and also wasn’t as deep as Little Squirrel said. You only know if you find out for yourself.

I think 淌 could mean ‘to flow down the river’ in this context. Since it seems like 淌 originally means to drip, shed or flow tears, the only way it could make sense to me is that he is ‘flowing across the river’. What do u think?

Hey Greg – this might make more sense if we look at it in English: “Go send (or take) the grain across the river.” But in Chinese, we just put the “go” at the end – “send the grain across the river go”.

good efforts of simple stories to be learnt for practising reading mandarin.
I have done a beginners course and was stuck with practising the use of the language.
This will be helpful for the learning as the explanations are very good.

Hi. I am a student from a singapore school. I was raised in only English so my chinese is not very good. Although i am a chinese. My aim now is to do well in my cl examination. I want to learn my second language, not as a flount language but as good as my first language bye guys. Wish u a good time learning cl or el .
Pls follow me on instagram @jehoshebateo

As a Chinese-born raised in America, my speaking is fluent but my reading and writing…not so much XD realizing that my Spanish literacy was all set to surpass my Mandarin in terms of writing gave me the impetus to start practicing again. Thanks for the post! Very helpful in jogging the memory again

I was wondering whether it was correct to use 他 or more appropriate to use 牠 to refer to the horse in this story. I have many questions… Is 他 used because in this story, the animal is a character – as a personifying mechanism? And does using 他 allow the narrator/writer to assign a gender to a character if it is an animal? Thank you!

Hello everyone, I am a Chinese. I am learning English now, I found this website when I looked for reference of my homework. Can I get some friends to help together? Or I just can help your guys learn Chinese. this is my wechat:245635031^_^ welcome any questions!

大家好！I’m a native Chinese, and I like Kendra’s website! But it hasn’t updated for a long time. So I try to build another Chinese reading website with my language learning partner, Richard. It has recordings and detailed explanations. I believe you will like it. Just have a try: http://www.whatstartwo.tech/Chinese/